Eden Grinshpan
Photography by Kayla Rocca for The Kit

Eden Grinshpan Knows How to Live

"It’s about eating with your hands and living large and getting dirty and unbuttoning your pants"

It’s a prematurely dark, curtain-closing sort of rainy Tuesday afternoon, and the mood in Toronto is sullen and sleepy. Unless you’re at Eden Grinshpan’s house. When the host of Top Chef Canada greets me at her front door, I am soggy and bedraggled, my umbrella theatrically whipped inside out by cold winds. She, meanwhile, is barefoot and as radiant as a sunbeam, exuding a bounding energy, almost camouflaged in her light, bright environment in a cream-coloured corduroy button-down and loose jeans.

Her home, which she shares with her husband, Ido (pronounced ee-do; even their names sound like they are betrothed), and their two daughters, has been freshly renovated by Toronto design darling Montana Burnett. It’s a caressable sweep of nubby cream couches, tahini-hued travertine, sumptuous hand-knotted Moroccan rugs, sumac-coloured pottery and low-slung vintage chairs upholstered in heathered apricot terry cloth. I feel as if I’ve landed in a ’70s Laurel Canyon bungalow, all tactile ease and low-key sex appeal. Grinshpan herself, with her long, middle-parted hair, reminds me of Ali MacGraw.

Eden Grinshpan
Left: Dries Van Noten sweater, $640, holtrenfrew.com. Smythe skirt, $495, shopsmythe.ca. Maguire shoes, $240, maguireshoes.com. Right: Bottega Veneta shirt, $2,540, holtrenfrew.com. The Row jeans, $1,030 ssense.com. Beaufille earrings, $260, ring, $635, beaufille.com.

The kitchen is Grinshpan’s sanctum and her stage—the sun-braised backdrop to the cooking videos on her Instagram channel, where she goes by @edeneats, and newly relaunched website. We sit at the kitchen island, which is acres of so-called Corfu marble, patterned in mesmerizing waves of pebble grey and Himalayan salt pale pink, adorned with gigantic fruit bowls abounding in persimmons and lemons.

Grinshpan has just finished recipe testing and shooting for a new series, Boss Veg. She offers me a plate, which I accept a little too quickly. It’s roasted acorn squash seasoned with Aleppo peppers and lemon, and loaded with fennel, toasted quinoa and parm—the result is artful, vibrant and inventive, heaped with flavour and freshness.

Grinshpan has garnered a following for dishes like this one. Her spice-laced, Middle Eastern and Mediterranean-influenced fare is as playful, bright and bold as she is. Her 2020 cookbook was titled Eating Out Loud, and as Grinshpan explains at a signature volume that I will describe as substantial: “Ido was like, ‘How do we explain you? You’re really…LOUD!’ And I’m like, YES, I’M LOUD. It’s about eating with your hands and living large and getting dirty and unbuttoning your pants and getting messy. We’re not precious here. We like to get in there!”

Eden Grinshpan
Beaufille top, $1,595, skirt, $1,250, earrings, $480, beaufille.com.

Grinshpan’s cooking is, in many ways, a love letter to her family, culture and travels. Growing up in Toronto, she shopped at local grocers with her dad, eating Persian barbari flatbread and Turkish delight and tongue sandwiches from Yitz’s deli. She spent summers in Israel, where her father is from, where she and her two sisters tucked into veggie-laden fluffy couscous on the beaches of Herzliya.

A high school Food Network-watching habit led to experimentation with baking, and she decided to enrol at London’s Cordon Bleu, where she graduated with a “grand diplôme” in pastry and cuisine. What follows sounds like it slipped off the pages of Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love, with an emphasis on the Eat. (We’ll get to the Love part later). Grinshpan signed up for a course called Leap Now, for which she travelled to Dharamshala, India, where she stayed with a family in the Dalai Lama’s temple and ate lunch every day with eight Tibetan monks. She trekked through the foothills of the Himalayas, volunteered at Mother Teresa’s hospice in Varanasi, took a course in silversmithing, got her nose pierced, stayed on a houseboat in Kashmir and volunteered at an orphanage in Rishikesh. She backpacked through Vietnam, Thailand and Laos, worked at a restaurant in Israel, then returned to Rishikesh to open an Ina Garten-style café at the orphanage, which provided a source of income for the locals, slinging lemon loaf for tourists.

At her dad’s (prescient) suggestion, she made a video of her work at the café—a reel that would make its way to a New York City talent agent and kickstart her television career. Her shows Eden Eats and Log On & Eat with Eden Grinshpan screened on The Cooking Channel. Grinshpan took to the spotlight with openness and comfort; she seems as deeply at ease in the larder as she is before the klieg lights.

Eden Grinshpan
Left: Cos top, $275, pants, $360, necklace, $275, cos.com. Beaufille earrings, $350, ring, $635, beaufille.com. Right: The Row dress, $6,430, ssense.com. Birks necklace, $1,160, maisonbirks.com. 

As I listen to her story, I remark on her gameness, the fact that the course name Leap Now could serve as her MO. “I was just ready! I was just: Give it to me! Gimme!” Grinshpan liberally peppers her sentences with gimmes, a verbal code for her gluttony for experience, flavour and fun. This approach applied to romance, too. When she met Ido, they fell fast and got engaged a month after they met. “A lot of what motivates me is just: Why not? It’s all about what’s next. I have FOMO when it comes to opportunity and experience.”

This appears to be a family trait. Throughout our chat, Grinshpan’s 6-year-old daughter, Ayv, is sitting with us, home sick from school. She’s wearing pink jammies patterned with breakfast foods (eggs, bacon, etc.), drawing cats and occasionally piping up, keen to be part of the show. About her grandfather, for example, she says, “Zadie inspired me to try prickly pear!” then “I always let Mama share my octopus legs!”

“We’re all extroverts,” Grinshpan remarks of Ayv’s contributions. She describes Ido as “a glass half-full, singing-in-the shower guy.” When Ido pops in to say hello, the couple have some (loud) laughs, look at each other adoringly and call each other “babe.”

There’s a photo of the two of them in Eating Out Loud: Grinshpan wears cantaloupe-coloured wide-leg pants and a vintage tee; Ido sings into a spoon as they stand next to their Wolf range, shakshuka bubbling on the stovetop. This scene might seem contrived, but having spent time in their kitchen, I now believe these are the kind of people—extroverts in love—who might legitimately lip-synch into flatware over cumin-scented tomato sauce.

Eden Grinshpan
Left: Simon Miller dress, $540, ssense.com.
 

After a couple of hours in Grinshpan’s orbit, what strikes me most is being witness to someone sincerely in alignment with themselves. Neuropsychologist Dr. Julia DiGangi, author of the book Energy Rising, defines wellness as a state of self-alignment, arguing self-care is not about long baths or spa visits but rather about behaving according to feeling.

I tend to dwell in a less comfortable place—in the chasm between what I thought life would or should be like and what it actually is. Malaise is my comfort zone. It occurs to me mid-acorn squash that it’s slightly destabilizing, albeit also inspiring and intriguing, to be in the company of people who seem exactly where and how they should be. In fact, everyone here—including the olive trees in the solarium, surely the happiest olive trees in Toronto—appears to be thriving.

During the holidays, the family will be at home, celebrating Hanukkah. “We’ll play dreidel with the girls and eat chocolate gelt, and I’ll make latkes and never see them because Ido eats them all,” says Grinshpan. There will be tobogganing and jazz. “I also love listening to Christmas music. So cozy.”

Of course, being warm and cozy and safe at home is freighted with meaning right now, given the Israel-Hamas war. “I’m leaning into pride; I’m so proud of who I am as a Jewish mother, wife, sister and friend. I don’t want to shy away from that. Now more than ever, I’m finding it important to honour and celebrate these Jewish traditions and pass them on to my kids,” she says. “Food is love.”

Photography: Kayla Rocca. Styling: Jaclyn Bonavota/Cadre Artists. Hair and makeup: Robert Weir/Cadre Artists

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